Vegan Isolation, Making Meat-Eating Friends & My Surreal Life in Asia.

just doing a really spontaneous relaxed
conversation here on you now if you guys don't know I broadcast on you now from time to time partly because the very real loneliness of my life in China although being a vegan in Canada was lonely as hell too and I've talked about that plenty of this YouTube channel but one of the questions was about coping with loneliness here in Asia and I talked for a while but the fact that in many ways I deal with loneliness in Asia that that other people can't imagine and that's because the type of loneliness you're locked into here you know the language barrier is so crucial it's so important to everything dividend you can't complain but I mentioned this like back when I was living in Laos there'd be long periods of time when I never had a meaningful conversation in English I can't say I wasn't speaking English at all because you know you could go to the pharmacy or you could go to the post office and they'd have a worker there who spoke some English and you'd say I send this letter to Canada or something you know you'd say a few words in English like that but where you're not having any conversations in English even though I mean you know I was learning the language and speaking Lao there are limits to how meaningful those interactions are going to be so obviously here in China that's a reality and now apparently I'm moving from conveying the big city out to the border with Myanmar a very ethnically diverse area where people speak five different languages but none of them are English so my ability to communicate with other people even though I am gregarious I am personable I am self-confident not a shy person I have no problem sparking up conversations with people and like you know you guys have heard me tell stories with the gym everybody at the gym knows me you know what I mean like you know it's cool but what are you gonna talk about in Chinese you know you can say this everybody that you have knows me but there's another sense in which they'll never know me right because the language barrier so the loneliness I live with and then I've grown accustomed to living with in Asia is acute and it would drive some people crazy and I've seen people I've met people who are driven crazy but I've met people who you know one of the common ways to respond is alcoholism drinking alcohol to cope with the loneliness that kind of thing but you see people who whoo one way or another go nuts and often you know that the guys there white white men who marry Asian women but then after they get married they realize how isolated they are and again they can talk to their wives about some topics to some extent but maybe you know on a more philosophical level they're things they can never discuss you know anyway I've met all types of metal sorts and all variations but um I do Co pretty well with loneliness and then there was a next question uh following up someone said well do you reject people do you refuse to become friends with people because they eat me because they're not vegan because I and that came because I mentioned in passing there are some people who refuse to be my friend who hate me who dislike me because I'm vegan I don't even complain like I can see it from their perspective like it's rational I disagree with it but it's rational you know there are people for whom meat and alcohol are nine-tenths of what they do in their spare time you know when they're at work that's one thing but their free time is devoted to the consumption of meat alcohol and there are other people for whom it's you know meat and marijuana or whatever but there are people for whom you know culturally and personally and in so many ways uh you know it's a big part of their identity it's fruit in a can so do it but do I reject people as my friends are possible friends because they because they eat meat because they're not vegan having mentioned that there are some people who reject me for that reason and I I can see from the perspective I think you know the realist answer you can give here is is you shouldn't have a policy on this I don't think anyone should set down a rule in their lives and say I'm never gonna make friends with people unless they meet these criteria I think you've got to take it on a case-by-case basis but you know on that case-by-case basis sometimes its decisive but normally it's because of what it tells me about the person's other attitudes towards life it's the way in which they're anti vegan it's not just the fact that they're into being remember I used to do humanitarian work so I'd meet other people who were in very obvious ways making the world a better place like okay they give a corny example you meet someone whose job is literally going into hospitals and saving lives I'm really thinking if someone actually worked in hospital equipment that actually does save lives though you know it's not like you're saving lives through your hands but your hands are installing the equipment you know in a third-world country to be that kind of specialist you meet people doing all kinds and you know people handing out sacks of rice to starving people whatever so you mean people are doing good things with their lives an obvious way but they're killing cows and pigs and chickens every day without thinking about it without giving him so I bet a lot of those people and I can't say that the meat-eating was ever decisive but often when it came up and you saw their rationale for why they ate meat or for why they were disparaging and insulting towards vegans that told you a lot about who they were and then for that reason it's like I'm not gonna lift a finger to make this friendship happen uh so recently it was a little bit touching to me I met a completely unplanned meeting I bumped into a guy but I was a done play mean but I was in a part of town where he hung out I bumped into a guy who I knew here in could Ming in nine years ago and he is a white man living in China who is struggling with that loneliness that I was describing at the top of this video and he was nine years ago and he's still struggling with that loneliness now now it's not he doesn't talk to people he talks to people every day he talks to people at work you know he talks to people all the time he knows a whole circle of other white men who speak English she Renkin Ming and he has friends and colleagues and you know I mean he does it he does have a certain social circle but again a lot of those interactions are very limited because the language barrier and then on the other hand you know some of them are limited for political reasons which I can really sympathize with so he was actually complaining to me believe me I could sit that's this he was saying that you know the other white guys here who were again they're white people I knew here nine years ago it's amazing these anyway sorry a lot of them are losers a lot of them for a lot of them this part of China is a dead end where they came to curl up and died and for me it's not and the difference in how you live your life is subtle but I mean you can even see that within the Western when you go to Florida for some people Florida is where they go to die and for some people it's where they go to live and some people move to Florida with a lot of ambition and wanting to make something happen and some people go there were absolutely no ambition absolutely no vision for the future and no purpose and they sink down into it so the same thing with a place like China a place like Thailand would have you it's 40% real fruit so uh this guy this particular example of a guy for whom this is where he's gonna fade away frankly he was really really eager to be my friend or to be my friend again because I knew him nine years ago and you know um what he had to say about veganism and vegetarianism was very contemptuous and very dismissive and very insulting and the reasoning behind it and the type of excuse making and the type of justification there that showed something about his character and now because I knew him nine years ago I also know that he is a white man who very regularly you know sleeps with prostitutes who pays money to have sex with Chinese women and brothels and I know that he has excuses and rationalizations and conflicted feelings and emotions and I know that he's a white man who at one time had aspirations intellectually to be a published author to be important to be accomplished to be a historian and he has excuses for why he has made so little effort why he's made so little progress in the last say 20 years in that direction so you know the type of excuse making that's tied to what he said to me about veganism even though what he said to me of veganism was in some ways mean-spirited it's not in his case it wasn't really what was the mean-spirited element that spoke to me I you know I just sat there and listened to him what he had to say about veganism and it was like I'm never gonna talk to you again that's always that I didn't say that to him that was what I was thinking and I think he could see it in my eyes I wasn't angry my expression didn't change but you know at the end of conversation he really said to me he sent me an email afterwards saying you know look I hope we can be friends again you know he's so desperate to talk to someone else who's a real intellectual someone who cares about history someone cares about politics and someone who doesn't have the kind of political differences from him that other people have here someone who's not an extremist in politics or attacking you and you know in some ways I can relate and some ways that can sympathize but we also have to make those judgments who are we gonna make time for who are we gonna open up the doors to who are we gonna trust who were gonna involve in our lives and buddy it ain't you it ain't him you know so you know there have been other people I mean I remember I won't even say who there was one old man and he just said he agreed with veganism completely in principle but he couldn't do it cuz he was too old to change his ways and we had several conversations I felt we had no conflict you know I've heard that case it was just real he just basically said yeah that's veganism is correct I remember he described it as beautiful he said with a beautiful way to live and it was morally correct but he said I'm too old now and I can't do it we'll talk now you know I did talk to him more than about that I got his I got his perspective a little bit and was interesting he was really it was he was really morally opposed to sportfishing like there was some really peculiar examples available that really spoke to him like you know fly-fishing this this hobby like he would really felt that was deeply immoral okay it's just interesting like you know idiosyncratically there were different elements of animal rights that he really cared about you heard his perspective but that that was his real answer so I didn't feel I had I had any great conflict with him and again that tells you something about his character so do I have some kind of simple policy like no you and me can't be friends we're never going to be cool cuz you're not vegan no and of course a lot of people who become my friends they become vegan or they become reduce Italian because they know me which is a beautiful part of my life um but on a case-by-case basis sometimes when people talk you through that why it is they they're not vegan or why they ridicule veganism I think that really does link to other ugly elements their character and reasons why maybe you two should not be friends why you should not open the door to them and again with friendship you are opening door to them they could have a really negative impact on your life too